Wrong site procedures performed in hospitals, ambulatory surgery centers and doctor's offices have been identified as a significant category of medical errors jeopardizing the safety of patients. The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Hospital Organizations (JACHO) requires surgeons to physically mark a procedure site on a patient with a marker or other device prior to any invasive procedure. In spite of this standard, surgeons occasionally fail to mark the procedure site or request that someone else, such as a nurse, mark the site. This could result in no site marking or a mismarked site. Without the surgeon marking a procedure site in advance, there is an increased risk that a surgeon may perform a procedure on a wrong site.
Other methods and systems have been proposed to mark a site other than the procedure site. For example, if the surgeon is to operate on a patient's right knee, an indicia or a mark would be placed on the patient's left knee and would show that the left knee is not to be operated on. However, these methods and systems fall short of requiring that the surgeon and not others must mark the procedure site before the procedure.
Thus, there is a need for a system and method which encourages surgeons to mark procedure sites and, thus, assists in preventing wrong site procedures and surgery. There is also a need for a system and method which encourages compliance with pre-procedure rules and, thus, assists in monitoring whether pre-procedure rules have been followed before performing a procedure.